Website Cyber Security 101

In 2026 it is critical to understand the persistent cyber security threat that exists. If you, like me, had heard things about cyber security in the past, and the information mostly went in one ear, and out the other ear, you most likely do not understand, as we/I did not understand, that all websites get attacked by hackers, some are more robust at repelling them.

The easy solution

Though we had built websites before, and even actively developed some websites, along the way we fell into going “the easy way.” Initially, after our static website design, we developed a WordPress website as a way of incorporating blog content directly on the front page of the website. We feel the blog is a feature of Dollar Scholars and we want it to show up prominently on the front of the website. In order to pull content in real time and have a feed of blog posts, news, and other tidbits in our website we needed to construct a dynamic site that would pull and present content in real time from a database that we manage.

At first, WordPress offered a convenient solution. We put together a site that looked reasonable to us, and, alas, did not routinely update any of the WordPress infrastructure. Due to the widespread use of WordPress sites, they are a popular target for hackers. Hackers write scripts that scroll the various webpages on the internet all day every day, and catalog and attempt to hack any and all existing WordPress sites. For this reason, if you have a WordPress site, you need to remain vigilant, and update your WordPress back end as frequently as possible. Of course, it is always really important to maintain a rigorous backup system. Backups are not just there to look nice, but they are there to be used, and you may need them sooner rather than later.

So, some developing or experienced hacker hit our original Dollar Scholars WordPress site, and deleted all the existing files we had. We had some backup of the data from the website, but the psychological blow was big. Even though it was not a dramatic, custom built website, it was still painful to lose what we had worked on, the efforts we had combined together to put together this website that represented the vision we had for Dollar Scholars.

The lesson and the way forward

I am definitely a person who believes in learning from your mistakes. We at Dollar Scholars are taking this as a teachable moment. Cyber security is something you must concern yourself with if you want to have a web presence in any professional context. We learned the hard way, but we are taking this lesson and turning a weak moment into a strength. Dollar Scholars latest website, the one you are likely reading this blog post on, is a fully custom-built website API of our own creation. Using an Application Programming Interface or API framework will allow us to manipulate content easily across different devices, and improve cyber security.

Stay tuned for more updates regarding the newest Dollar Scholars website!